Kara Hoblin’s work and art often intersect. As the director of guest culture at the Sound View Greenport, Hoblin — a multimedia artist who also runs the North Fork Art Collective at the Fiedler Gallery — has designed an array of arts-oriented programming at the hotel and its accompanying Halyard restaurant. Now, in collaboration with local writer Matt Daddona, Hoblin has expanded the programming once again with a monthly writers open mic she’s dubbed the Nameless Writers Salon.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time at the Sound View,” says Hoblin, who’s been mulling over the project for over a year. “My world is the art world. I don’t know a whole lot of writers and I didn’t really know the best way to do it.”
Hoblin reached out to her longtime friend Daddona, a writer and poet, to get the salon started. Daddona, whose first novel is set to release in May, agreed to host and curate the first salon that kicked off the series in January.
“The quietness of January let us really flesh it out,” says Hoblin.
The Nameless Writers Salon — a name Hoblin and Daddona came up as they struggled for a title — was held in the Halyard’s piano bar on Jan. 18 and included readings by Alex Erey, Jack Gismondi, Billy Hands and Stella Keating. The salon was a resounding success, and Hoblin and Daddona decided to continue the Nameless Writers Salon as a monthly event.
Daddona, a Southold local who has hosted reading series throughout the five boroughs, jumped at the chance to host a writers salon on the North Fork.
“Kara’s idea for approaching me was that she’s in the art world but was kind of wondering, where are the other kinds of artists?” Daddona says. “The poets, the playwrights, and singers.”
For the first event, Daddona reached out to local writers he knew but who weren’t necessarily professional writers, such as Gismondi, who is a plumber by trade.
“It was really nice to meet someone out here who, on the surface, is not a [professional] writer, but who is an incredible voice and writes consistently just as much as anyone,” says Daddona.
Daddona hopes that the reading series will continue to be a place for writers of all voices and experiences to showcase their work.
“It’s not a place where I want to vet work and say, ‘here’s our spotlighted reader and everyone should be reverent to them,’” Daddona says.
The theme for the February salon — which Hoblin says she and Daddona came up with while enjoying a Hemingway daiquiri in the piano bar after the first reading — is “The Love Drop,” set for Thursday, Feb. 15. Writers will read love letters to the things that “inspire, regale, confuse or challenge them,” Hoblin says.
Daddona hopes to get as many voices in the salon as possible over the coming months.
“There are writers out here who aren’t ‘capital W’ writers but people who are creative,” he says. “That’s the primary goal.”
Check out the February Nameless Writers Salon, “The Love Drop,” on Feb. 15 at the Piano Bar at the Halyard (58775 County Road 48, Greenport). Seating is extremely limited, so email [email protected] to reserve your spot.
